The partnership with publisher Wiley was announced in the summer of last year, and brings print and distribution together at Wiley’s European Distribution Centre facility in Bognor Regis.
CPI has now invested in a web-fed Canon ColorStream 6700 and sheetfed ImagePress C9010 for the site, in what Alison Kaye, CPI UK managing director for STMA and Colour, described as “a substantial multi-million pound investment”.
“When fully ramped up we will have over 40 staff within the Wiley Bognor facility,” she said.
CPI already has a ColorStream at its Eastbourne site, as well as a fleet of seven Canon Océ 6000 series devices at its Eastbourne and Wiltshire operations.
“We’ve had a strong working relationship with Canon for a number of years and after installing a ColorStream printer in our Eastbourne site in 2019, we knew that the device would be the perfect solution for our latest partnership with Wiley Distribution,” she said.
Kaye said two publishing companies, Edward Elgar Publishing and John Hunt Publishing, had come on board since the new joint venture was announced.
“The publishers have already started to see the benefits from the new print system and we’re looking forward to working with more publishing firms in the future,” she added.
The new kit is installed and will be fully up and running as of next week.
Canon UK head of commercial print, production printing products Stuart Rising described the CPI-Wiley offering as “revolutionary” and “an exciting new proposition” for customers.
“It’s really exciting. The technology we have in our portfolio at the moment lends itself particularly well to this sort of short-run, zero inventory application. We’ve been discussing this with Alison and the CPI team for many months and we’re really pleased to be working with them on it,” he said.
CPI is also using Canon’s Prisma automated workflow technology.
“Over the last 13 years, we’ve been able to develop a trusted partnership with the business and it has been great to be part CPI’s most recent venture. The ColorStream is the perfect choice for anyone looking to combine flexibility, quality, and speed, and we’re looking forward to working with CPI further in the future,” Rising added.
The ColorStream 6700 uses Canon’s DigiDot drop-on-demand piezo inkjet technology and prints in monochrome or CMYK at 600x600dpi. It has a paper width of 165mm-560mm and an optional stack infeed. It can produce 675ppm (A4) in single web configuration, or 1,010ppm monochrome.
The finishing equipment involved had not been disclosed at the time of writing.
Separately, CPI Group's continental business has also just agreed a new strategic partnership with Zeitfracht, the largest wholesaler and distributor in DACH (Germany/Austria/Switzerland). The partnership mirrors the CPI/Wiley Distribution arrangement here in the UK, but also covers the Trade books market.
